From edgeworth to fisher to vickrey: A comment on Michael J. Boskin's Vickrey lecture

Irving Fisher has been overlooked as an influence on William Vickrey's work on taxation and as a link between Edgeworth and Vickrey. Vickrey was Fisher's last and greatest student.     

Debt and household finance: evidence from the Financial Diaries

The Financial Diaries data-set is a unique, new set of year-long daily income, expense and financial transactions for households from three different areas of South Africa. These data show that over-indebted households (those that spend 20 per cent or more of their gross monthly income on debt) do not fit one homogeneous profile. Formal debt tends to be responsible for over-indebtedness in the urban areas, while in the rural areas the cause tends to be informal debt. In the urban areas high indebtedness is more prevalent among medium-income and high-income households, whereas in the rural areas it occurs at all income levels. High indebtedness in grant-dependent rural households tends to be persistent, whereas in wage-dependent urban households it is often short-lived. These findings present a new financial picture of poor rural populations that is unlikely to be touched by recent policy measures to address over-indebtedness.     

Union recognition and partnership at work: a new legitimacy for Irish trade unions?

In the Irish context of national partnership and the promotion of workplace partnership at firm level, unions might be expected to have achieved, at least, a pragmatic acceptance by employers. Using a survey of full‐time union officials in eight trade unions organising in the private sector, this paper reports their experiences of recent recognition campaigns. Employer opposition appears to have intensified, and in a substantial percentage of cases has involved the victimisation of activists. In facilitating employees to make a free choice regarding union representation, the Codes of Practice and the Industrial Relations Amendment Act 2001 are regarded by the majority of officials as inadequate. A majority of officials favoured the introduction of a statutory right to recognition. Non‐union firms appear as ‘free riders’ that have enjoyed the benefits of national partnership but evaded the compromises and concessions that necessarily characterise such agreements. If left unchecked, the free‐rider phenomenon could undermine the institutional framework on which partnership is based.     

What Can Eastern Philosophy Teach Us About Business Ethics?

This paper examines what, if anything, "Eastern philosophy" can teach us about business ethics. The whole idea of "Eastern ethics" or so-called "Asian values" is suspect on a number of scores. The paper argues that It is better to refer to specific ideas of particular thinkers influential within one country or tradition. The paper concentrates on the philosophy of two such thinkers – Watsuji Tetsuro of Japan and Confucius. When this more "micro" approach is adopted, we can learn some important lessons with respect to the meaning of trust, the longterm nature of relations, and ethics that extend far beyond the limited idea of rights. The paper considers these lessons in the business context.     

The effect of deposit-rate ceilings on bank risk: A comment

In a recent issue of this journal, Mingo (1978) analyzed the effect of deposit-rate ceilings on bank risk. The analysis showed that deposit-rate ceilings increase a bank's total risk. The purpose of this note is to examine a different but related question: Is systematic risk affected by Regulation Q ceilings ceteris paribus? The results of our empirical test indicate that systematic risk is not affected by deposit-rate ceilings. Taken together then, Mingo's and the present results show that removal of deposit-rate ceilings would not increase bank risk.     

Trade Unions and Political Participation in the European Union: Still Providing a Democratic Dividend?

Decline in electoral participation is a feature of many Western democracies. In this paper, we focus on the relationship between trade union membership and political participation. Workplace authority structures, trade union membership and union presence have been identified as important influences on electoral participation. Based on a survey of employees in 15 member states of the European Union, we test for a relationship between political participation, union membership and union workplace presence. The independent effect of trade union membership on political participation was found to be both significant and positive and is associated with higher levels of political activism and electoral participation. Furthermore, an institutional context that facilitates high levels of union density seems likely to have an overall positive effect on citizen participation.     

Financial instruments of the poor: initial findings from the South African Financial Diaries study

A new data set called the South African Financial Diaries has been produced, based on a sample of 166 households, drawn from three different areas in South Africa – Langa, Lugangeni and Diepsloot. The selected households represent a range of dwelling types and wealth categories. A unique methodology was used to create a year-long daily data set of every income, expense and financial transaction used by every one of these households. Within this sample, households used, on average, 17 different financial instruments over the course of the study year. A composite household portfolio, based on all 166 households, would have an average of four savings instruments, two insurance instruments and 11 credit instruments. The same composite household portfolio would have about 30 per cent formal instruments and 70 per cent informal instruments. Interestingly, it was found that rural households use as many financial instruments as urban ones.     

A taxonomy of marketing planning styles

This study examines marketing planning styles among a sample of organizations in the health care industry. A taxonomy of marketing planning styles—limited marketing planners, constituency-oriented marketing planners, and comprehensive marketing planners—is derived and then related to the literature on planning. Differences among the marketing planning styles are tested based on hypotheses relating to planning comprehensiveness. The results suggest that: (i) marketing planning styles differ fairly distinctly in their attention to selected elements of the environment; and (ii) the marketing planning style employed is related to the level of competition and to organization size and complexity.     

Afterword on the Five-Year Outlook: Problems and promises

The editors offer a synthesis that reflects the motivations and concerns that underlie this volume and present “some reasonably tempered hopes and future prospects”. Among the former, they discuss “political/ institutional issues” impinging on the Outlook—its purpose, production, users, and feedback—as well as “technical/intellectual” ones. Among the latter, they note that for Outlook reports beyond the second, current signals are that the science policy community will be involved more substantially, and that contributions in general will be decentralized. They foresee the Outlook evolving into a forum for discussion and advocacy of future science-technology priorities.